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Cooper
Friday, December 5th, 8 AM.
“Are you nervous?” I ask Kris.
We’re flying out to Germany, and I’m going to be meeting his extended family for the first time. His parents have already been there for a few weeks, but Kris wanted to wait to come with me.
He smiles. “I feel like I should be the one asking you that.”
I shake my head. “I’m not too nervous. Except for my German speaking skills.” I frown, zipping the tightly shut lid of my suitcase.
He passes a hand over my shoulder, pressing a kiss to the side of my face. “Du machst das toll. Es ist eine sehr schwierige Sprache,” he says.
I pause for a second, translating. “I’m doing great, it’s a hard language?”
He grins at me. “Yes exactly! You will be fine. We’ll just speak slowly.”
“What did I do to deserve you?” I ask, cradling his face in my hand.
He brushes our noses together. “You’re you. That’s more than enough.”
I shake my head, in awe. “I love you so much. I can’t wait to see where you grew up. I’m so excited.”
“I love you too,” he says. “I’m so excited to show you off to all my friends and family.”
I grin at him, my eyes flitting to the clock on his wall. “Shit. We’re gonna be late.”
“Oh,” He glances over his shoulder, suspiciously calm considering his usual punctuality. He shoulders his bag. “Ready to go?”
I pull my suitcase off the bed, tugging him in for a kiss. “Let’s hit it.”
“Oh my god, Kris,” I sigh as we take our seats in the waiting area. “You said our plane was at 11!”
He gives me a sheepish smile. “Well, I didn’t want to be late!”
“So you had to lie to me? Your loving boyfriend who is never ever late?”
He snorts. “More like my lying boyfriend.”
“Punctuality freak,” I tease him, throwing my legs over his lap and opening the bag of Red Vines I bought at the airport convenience store.
“You know you really should have bought those at the gas station,” he points out, stealing one. “They overcharge so much at airports.”
I shoot him an amused glance. “Well, I didn’t think I would be waiting around for an hour and a half.”
“Fair,” he says, popping the candy into his mouth.
“I’ve never left the country before,” I tell him, watching the planes outside the window take off and land.
“Really?” he asks, entwining our hands. “Well, new experiences then!”
I glance across and smile at him. He‘s seemed so at peace all day, so thrilled to be going back.
It’s nice to see him so happy, but it also serves as a stark reminder that he still doesn’t see California as home. Not quite yet.
I can’t lie, the thought scares me a little. I’m not sure what I would do if he wanted to go back forever.
I try to shake away the thought, gripping his hand tightly. I don’t have to think about anything other than the plane rides for the next 15 hours. We’re heading to Colorado first, then catching a direct 10 hour flight to Munich. I sink back in my seat and relax. So what, it’s a long flight. What’s the worst that could happen?
I haven’t stopped vomiting for the last hour and a half.
“Hey,” Kris says softly, as he hands me a fresh bag. “Are you alright?”
I close my eyes tightly, another wave of nausea rolling through me so intensely it makes me want to cry. I can’t remember the last time I felt so sick, but somewhere in the last five hours, the rhythmic lull of the plane got into my head, turning everything sideways and upside down.
“Yeah,” I say, a little hoarsely. “Never knew I got plane sick.”
He smiles a little, running a soothing hand over my back. “It’s a long flight,” he says. “But there’s only a few hours to go.”
It’s meant to be comforting, but the idea of a few more hours of this makes me want to scream. The full-on toddler-in-a-grocery-aisle-recently-informed-he-can't-have-candy-tantrum level kind of scream.
I lurch forward again, spluttering into the bag but nothing comes up.
He pulls me against his chest softly, and I push away a little, worried I’m gonna be sick on him.
“There’s nothing left,” he says quietly, and he runs a hand through my hair. “Just relax.”
I close my eyes against him. I guess I must fall asleep, because when I come back to, my head is in his lap, and he’s thrown a blanket over me. I thank God for his foresight in booking the first row, meaning my legs could kick out in front of me, stopping only at the window. Kris is similarly stretched forward, though with his long legs, it would be almost impossible for him not to be.
He’s speaking quietly to the person next to him, and I blink, disoriented as to why I can’t understand, until my brain catches up and recognises the German. Recognises, of course, being a strong word—I don’t actually understand any of the conversation.
Shit. My attempts to learn German have clearly gotten me nowhere at all, and it hadn’t really occurred to me until now that obviously Kris would be speaking in German when we got to Germany. As dumb as it seems, it makes me feel cut off from him.
“Hey,” he says, looking down and realising I’m awake. “Welcome back. We’re almost there.”
“Define almost,” I say groggily, sitting up, and he huffs out a laugh.
“Ten minutes.”
“Oh,” I shift back to look at him, surprised. “That really is almost. I must have been asleep for ages.”
He nods, then leans in to whisper conspiratorially. “You drooled all over me.”
I slap him in the chest firmly and he laughs, slicking back my hair from where it’s standing up all over the place.
It’s a blur after that: going through Customs (alone, because Kris and his German passport got waved right through, lucky bastard), getting our luggage, then a train ride out of Munich and into his town. It’s early afternoon when we finally arrive, and when Kris tells me he’s booked us a hotel so we don’t have to stay with his relatives—I’m secretly relieved.
I’m already exhausted enough, the idea of having to meet, and impress, a bunch of new people who know nothing about me, and might not even speak the same language is enough to make me want to sleep for at least twenty more years.
Kris checks us in, and I’m amazed by how quickly he speaks in German. It’s not that he’s slow in English, exactly, but he always seems very deliberate in his word choices. Here, it just flows right out of him.
I’ve heard him speak in German before, of course, with his parents. But when I’m around, it’s only ever a few sentences at a time, and I’m starting to realise that Kris wasn’t joking when he told me he slows it down for me to understand. In normal conversation, he goes so fast that by the time I’ve translated one word, he’s said six more.
He turns back to me, keys in hand, and guides me up toward the elevator.
I’m blinking hard, and he laughs a little as he presses the right button. “Try not to fall asleep just yet,” he says. “Or the jet lag will follow you for days.”
“My eyes are literally stone,” I tell him. “Heavy as fuck.”
He laughs again, taking my face in his hands. He presses two gentle kisses to each of my eyelids in turn, and they flutter in the wake of his lips.
I melt into him. “How is that supposed to make me more awake?”
“Sorry,” he murmurs, and I blink my eyes open into his.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You’ll just have to find a way to keep me up.”
He’s staring at me hungrily, sweeping over every detail of my face as he’s trying to commit them to memory.
I pull him in flush against my chest, and his lips part just a little. I drop my heavy gaze to them, and he winds one arm around my waist.
We’re inching closer and closer together, barely a breath away when the elevator doors open, and we spring away from each other as if burned.
The elderly couple who enter don’t react, and we ride in silence until our floor. Kris shoulders his bag, and I grab my own, slipping out of the door, and watching it close behind us.
We glance at each other for a moment, before simultaneously bursting into laughter.
“Well,” he says, swiping the key against our door. “Clearly we cannot be trusted.”
I don’t hesitate when I push him onto the bed, stripping my jacket off my shoulders with haste. “Clearly,” I tell him, before lowering myself to follow him.
Monday, December 8th, 11 AM.
“Okay, and that is my old school. I had the worst English teacher in the world, it’s a miracle that we are speaking right now.”
I snort, burying my face into our joined hands. “I can’t imagine you being bad at a subject.”
He gives me a fake haughty look that sends me into another round of laughter. “I never said I was bad, I said my teacher was.”
I throw my hands up in mock defense and he smiles. “I take it back.”
“Thank you,” he says, entangling our hands once more.
We’ve been walking around Kris’s hometown for the past thirty minutes. Although yesterday was our first official day, everything is closed on a Sunday—which, weird—so we had to wait until today to explore it properly. It’s pretty small, and I think we’ve almost circled it by now. It is really pretty though. All old, traditional houses and buildings that would have been built long before anything back home in Bayview. There’s a soft fall of day-old snow on the rooftops that really completes the picturesque feel, and I swear I could pull out my phone and take one hell of a postcard photo.
I’m not really looking at the town though, if I’m being honest. I’m too distracted by Kris.
His face has lit up as we wander around, pointing out all his old haunts, voice getting warm and fast with enthusiasm.
It’s so nice to see him like this, and just being in his town, I feel so much closer to him. It’s like those last puzzle pieces are sliding right into place.
“Here,” he says, crossing the street until we’re in front of what looks like a small restaurant. “I always used to eat here.” He looks across to me with a grin. “It was like my Café Contigo.”
I snort at the reference. “Should we go and eat then? I need to see what’s so special about this place.”
He positively beams at the idea. “Yeah,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Let’s do it.”
We walk in, and Kris leads me straight to a table in the back.
“Uh, shouldn’t we wait to be seated?” I ask, gesturing back at the door, and he laughs.
“You seat yourself in Germany.”
“Huh,” I say, eloquently. “So, do we call a waiter over or?”
“No,” Kris laughs. “That’s rude, you just—“ He glances up, catching someone’s eye, and he make his way over.
“I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone,” I mutter as the waiter places menus in front of us.
“Danke,” Kris says, flipping open the menu. “Do you want me to see if they have an English menu?” he asks, smiling at me.
I shake my head. “I can do it.”
I glance down at the menu and immediately wince. Maybe a little overconfident. Speaking and listening is one thing, but reading is a whole other ballpark.
“Okay, I have no idea what this says,” I admit, and he laughs softly, reaching over the table to point out items.
He translates them for me, skipping over the stuff he says I won’t like.
“Oh!” I say, once he says them aloud. “I know that! I just didn’t realise that’s how you wrote it.”
He tangles our hands together, and bumps my knee gently under the table. “Well, to be fair, you haven’t had much reading time in German.”
I laugh, squeezing his hand. “I can say it though,” I tell him. “Can I order? I can try.”
The idea makes me almost ridiculously nervous. It’s not as if Kris won’t be able to correct me if I make a mistake, but I still feel a lot of pressure to do well. I want to show him that I’m making an effort.
His grin is as bright as the sun. “Yes,” he says. “Definitely.”
I say the words over and over in my head, until I’m confident enough, and Kris catches the attention of the waiter once more.
I smile at him, brittle and nervous as hell. “Hallo. Kann ich bitte eine Rinderroulade, eine Schweinshaxe, eine Cola und ein Wasser bekommen?”
The waiter raises an eyebrow. “Mit oder ohne Kohlensäure?”
I instantly panic. I was not expecting a question in response. “Uh.”
Kris doesn’t let me flail too long. “Do you want the water still or sparkling?”
“Oh,” I frown. “Um, just tap is fine, I guess.”
Kris relays this information to the waiter, who makes note and then heads off. I sigh heavily as the anxiety flees my body, and Kris reaches across to take my hand.
“Good job, baby,” he says, smiling softly at me.
“Really?” I ask. “I kinda panicked.”
“No,” he says, stroking the back of my hand. “You did a really good job. Very clear.”
I flush a little under his stare, trying to bite back my pleased grin. I’m not very successful because Kris laughs, tangling our hands together and leaning a little further forward on the table.
“I love you,” he says, like it tumbles out of him unintentionally. “I can’t wait to show you the rest of town.”
“I love you too,” I tell him back. squeezing his hand. “But I am severely jet lagged. We’re gonna need to jump out of a plane if you wanna keep me awake for the next hour or two. The adrenaline’s the only thing that’ll keep my head from hittin’ a pillow.”
Kris smiles, slow and deliberate. “Don’t worry. I have plans.”
“We’re not actually gonna jump out of a plane, are we?” I joke, but Kris doesn’t answer. I raise my eyebrow at him. “Kris?”
“Look,” he says. “Our drinks are coming.”
“Kristoffer!”
His plans are a little less extreme than jumping out of a plane; emphasis on little.
We get on a bus—which I point out in my infinite wisdom is technically not part of the town—and head almost all the way back to Munich before we get off.
“Where are we?” I ask him, as we pull up in front of some sort of complex.
He grins at me. “I thought you would miss doing sports already.”
I peer suspiciously at the building. “This doesn’t look like a baseball diamond.”
He takes my hand, laughing a little. “I never said it was. It’s an ice skating rink.”
“A what?”
“Well, it’s a rink filled with frozen water—also known as ice.”
I look at him flatly. “Thank you for that. I’ve just never ice skated before.”
“It’s easy,” he promises me. “Just like walking.”
I raise my eyebrows. “With blades attached to your feet.”
“You’re so dramatic,” he says, with a laugh. “You’ll be fine.”
I’m inclined not to agree but I follow him inside diligently anyway.
He speaks to the woman at the front desk and returns with two pairs of ice skates. I follow him to the area where everybody else is putting on their skates, and as we sit down, he swings my legs into his lap.
“I can do that myself, you know,” I tell him, laughing a little.
He steadfastly ignores me as he tightens up the laces on my boots.
“I used to come here all the time as a kid,” he says to me. “I always loved skating growing up.”
“Really?” I ask him, surprised. “I guess I just can’t picture you skating. Do you miss it?”
“Yes, I guess,” he says as he turns his attention to his own skates. “But I don’t know, there are a lot of things I did in Germany that I don’t do anymore.”
I’m quiet thinking about that for a while, before I turn to him, biting my lip as I consider my question carefully. “Do you feel like you lost a part of yourself when you moved?“
“Yes,“ he says, pausing as he works out how to phrase it correctly. “And no. I am a different person now than I was then, but I don’t know that who I was then was a better person, or that I would like to keep being that person. Moving changed me a lot, I guess. That change wasn’t necessarily bad. I like where I am now, I like who I am, but most importantly I like who I’m with.” He grins at me, soothing one hand over mine. “I wouldn’t change it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t go back. I am so thankful for everything that led me to you.”
I blink harshly, thinking for one moment that I’m about to cry. “I’m thankful for everything that has led me to you, too. I know we had a shitty road to take, but being with you is the best thing in my life. I would take any amount of shitty roads to wind up here.”
He grips my hand tightly. “We have that in common.”
We stare each other for a moment, mirroring twinning grins back at one another, before he finally stands, offering me a hand.
“Ready to try skating?” he teases, offering his hand to help me up.
I’m immediately unsteady on my feet. “Sure,” I tell him, grasping his hands in a death grip.
He helps me across to the rink, laughing as I wobble behind him. He steps out onto the ice, instantly crossing one leg behind to gracefully glide backwards. In contrast, I almost fall flat on my face.
He laughs, easing me onto the ice. “Just bend your knees a little.”
“I can’t,” I tell him, tersely.
“You’re an athlete,” he teases me. “You can bend your knees.”
I’m wobbling, but I manage to bend my knees a little. Kris’s hands are warm and solid in mine as he guides me around the rink.
“I can’t believe you’re skating backward right now!”
He laughs. “It’s not that hard,” he says, pulling up until he’s by my side instead of in front of me. He wraps an arm around my waist to stabilise me, before sliding down to hold my hand once more.
“Okay?” he asks.
“I got it,” I tell him. His hand slips from mine for a moment and I grasp it back desperately. “That was not an invitation to let go!”
He laughs loudly, but he grips back even tighter. “I got you. Promise.”
Tuesday, December 8th, 4 PM.
Kris’s friends are really nice. Really, they are. But I’m not quite sure they’ve grasped the concept of me wanting to learn German. They’ve spoken in nothing but English to me for the past hour and a half. Kris grins every time someone starts a sentence, trying not to laugh.
I roll my eyes at him fondly. I’ve been answering back the questions I can in German, but I can’t lie, it’s so tempting to speak English just because I know I can. It’s not helpful—but I’d rather struggle through a conversation in English than potentially embarrass myself in German.
“Will you teach us?” One of his friends, Anna, asks. I’ve seen her before, in Kris’s old Instagram posts. She’s been one of his best friends for long before I ever met him.
“How to pitch?” I ask, surprised. “Why?”
Anna mimes throwing a ball, and Kris laughs. “It’s cool,” she says.
Kris reaches over to adjust my beanie lower on my head. My face is flushed with the unfamiliar cold, and he drops his finger to the tip of my red nose for just a second. “It is cool,” he says, almost absentmindedly.
“Baseball is cool?” Jakob asks, teasingly in a heavy accent, pulling Kris’s hood over his eyes. “You’re so Americanised.”
Kris flips him off wordlessly before shoving his hoodie back so he can see.
Anna clings to my arm. “Teach me,” she whines and I laugh.
“I don’t have a ball.”
“Ich habe einen Fußball,” Another friend offers from the edge of the skating bowl we’re standing in. He holds up a soccer ball, and I snort.
“Den kann er nicht genau werfen,” Kris laughs. “Here,” he directs at me, digging a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He molds it into a ball before tossing it in my direction. “Close enough.”
I laugh. “Sure,” I relent, handing it over to Anna, and guiding her to position correctly.
Kris gives me the sort of look that makes me melt—soft, loving and edged on the kind of desperation that has me shutting my eyes tightly to concentrate.
“Okay, so pull your arm all the way up…” I begin.
Where Kris’s friends were over eager to talk to me in English, his family is decidedly the opposite. We’re at his Aunt’s house for dinner, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as much like a fish out of water.
There are about a hundred conversations going on between the 20 or so people there, all in rapid German. I can barely keep up enough to know what the conversation is about let alone what they’re saying. To make matters worse, his family are all trying to engage Kris in several different conversations at the same time, pulling his focus enough to kind of leave me hanging.
He doesn’t mean to do it, and keeps shooting me apologetic glances, getting halfway through translating something before someone else asks him another question. I’ve been picking at the food on my plate for lack of anything else to do. His parents are down all the way at the other end of the table, and I don’t know anyone else.
There’s a bread roll sitting in a basket right in front of me that I want to have, but I’m too nervous to grab it. I spent the entire car ride here secretly googling table manners in Germany, but everything I read has flown straight out of my mind, and I’m terrified to accidentally commit some offensive faux pas that will have his whole family looking down on me.
Look, is it logical? No.
But I’m stressed, okay! And there’s some bubbling resentment and gnawing guilt and embarrassment and God knows what else all fighting for dominance in my brain right now, so it’s kind of a lot.
Kris tugs on my hand, pulling me back into reality. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he murmurs. “I’ll be right back.”
“Like right back?” I clarify, whispered, but high in stress.
He laughs lowly. “Promise.” He squeezes a hand on my shoulder as he brushes past and I have to bury the frantic instinct to just follow him so I don’t have to be alone.
Okay. It’s like, two minutes. I can handle this. The conversation around me slows, but before I can hook into what they’re saying, it stops completely.
When I glance up from my plate, I’m met with ten or so pairs of curious eyes.
Oh my God, I cannot handle this.
I blink back owlishly, my eyes skittering across the table when the silence extends. How long is a minute? I glance toward the bathroom door, but Kris is nowhere to be seen. I try to catch his parents’ eyes, but they’re wrapped up in their own conversations, leaving me with the rapid attention of the other half of the table.
This is the worst experience of my life.
All I can think is: say something. Anything. They’re going to think you’re an idiot.
But no words are coming to my head, especially not in German. I definitely should have studied more.
Holy shit, this has to be the longest staring contest a table of people have ever had. I’m genuinely considering just going to the bathroom as well, when the chatter starts back up, and I whip around with unadulterated relief to Kris’s familiar green eyes.
I’ve never been happier to see another human being in my entire life, and I hold onto his hand so tightly as he sits next to me, I’m scared I’m going to break something. I can deal with another hour of being left out of conversations, just as long as he doesn’t leave my side again.
Kris loops his hand around mine firmly, and says in slow, comprehensible German. “Cooper is taking some business classes at college, too.”
His cousin stares at me for just a moment, before catching onto Kris’s idea. Unlike his rapid chatter before, the next sentences are slow and measured, as if he is considering the simplest words he could use.
It isn’t perfect, and they still sometimes have to pause, translate words in English or correct my grammar. There’s even once where Kris has to pull out Google Translate as he totally blanks on the English word. But it’s better, it’s a conversation, and I relax into it, letting myself make mistakes. After a while, I even reach out and grab that damned bread roll.
It’s just as good as I thought it would be.
Kris smiles at me softly and I grip his hand tightly to communicate: thank you.
I can read his responding smile like words on a page: any time.
I’m quiet the entire way back to the hotel, and it doesn’t escape Kris’s notice. He’s kind enough to wait until we’re in the room before pushing me on it, though.
“Are you okay?” he asks softly, as he closes the door behind us. “I know that was probably a lot.”
I start to shed the many layers that I’ve had to wear to keep warm, stripping until I’m in nothing but my boxers. “It was fine.”
Kris doesn’t look convinced, as he slides under the bedsheets to join me. “It’s okay if it was overwhelming. I should have made it easier for you, I didn’t exactly help translate, I was just so caught up in the conversations.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair.”
I close my eyes to stop the stinging guilt I feel, brushing his arm absentmindedly. “It’s not your job.”
He huffs out a little laugh. “Of course it is.”
“No,” I say, a little more harshly than I intend. I push up from him, and he settles across from me, watching me with worried eyes. “I should have cared more, I should have tried more. It doesn’t even occur to me that you’re speaking in your second language every moment of every day that we’re together. It’s fucking exhausting to be translating all the time, and I just expect you to do it for me because, what? I’m too lazy to learn your language? You deserve to speak in your own language at home, and I should have tried to learn more, rather than just relying on you to do all the work. That’s what wasn’t fair.”
Kris is shaking his head, looking at me like I’m the best thing he’s ever seen. He cradles my face gently, and that’s when I realise that there are hot, angry tears rushing down my cheeks. “Cooper, you are trying. You need to cut yourself some slack. It’s not so hard for me to translate anymore, I’ve spoken English everyday for four years, I’m used to it. I don’t expect you to learn an entire language in a year. No one does.” He smiles at me fondly, brushing away another stray tear. “You already try so much harder than I ever expected. Where is all this coming from?”
I blink, feeling guilty. There’s a thought that I’ve been trying to push away ever since we got here. “You’re so happy, being here. Speaking your language, being with your family, where you grew up. I guess I’m just scared that one day, you’ll wake up, and you’ll realise that you’d rather be at home.”
Kris looks bemused. “Cooper… you’re my home.”
I don’t hesitate when I collapse into him, pulling him tightly against me. All the tension I didn’t know I had flees my body, and I take a deep breath, relishing in the smell of his shampoo. “I love you so much.”
“You have no idea,” he says, tugging me back down until we’re lying, wrapped up in one another.
He strokes my arm, silent for a second as if deep in thought. Then he says, “At least one good thing came from this trip.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask. “What was that?”
“We learned that outside of the baseball diamond, I’m a better athlete than you.”
It startles offended laughter out of me, and I shove away from him. “Fuck off! Ice skating isn’t a sport, it’s a death trap.”
His laughter follows me all the way over into his tackle, as he pins me on the bed. I’m stronger than him, but I don’t struggle.
He brushes a kiss against my nose. “You keep thinking that, baby.”
I shake my head. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” he says smugly, burying a kiss into my neck.
He’s right.
I let him press kisses all over my skin as I draw him in closely. I realise now that, never should have worried. After all, he’s my home too.